They don't. They do the work for a community they're part of. The social network hosts that community, and tries to make a profit doing so.
I organise a meetup that's held in a pub (well, not at the moment). People coming to the meetup spend money on the pub's beer and pizza. Am i doing free work for a for-profit public house?
Yes. Unequivocally, yes. If I were the owner of X thing and Y person was sending lots of people my way I would be more than happy to give Y person something in return. In your example I would offer free pizza and beer at the absolute minimum. You are selling yourself short.
It's not your intent to do work and it's probably not the pub owners desire to pay for meetup organizers, but regardless of your and the pub owner's intent, work has happened.
It's one thing to organize a bake sale in a public park, but when you choose one pub over other competitors, and they profit from it, you're doing work for the pub for free.
This is why experienced community managers works with businesses to get prices for the event discounted, or set up an agreement for profits to go towards the event.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear, this point is not directed at friendlybus, but to the general sentiment upthread (e.g. ramphastidae) that seems to assume that because reddit is benefiting from the existence of the community therefore the community cannot benefit from the existence of reddit. The underlying reason why is because individuals benefit from the community.
Also I would question if reddit actually makes much profit from individual communities like r/relationshipadvice, especially compared to the pub scenario which I find generally acceptable.
A reddit moderator's free time and a toxic community is a net negative for a moderator, payment may offset the health cost.
The option is to do "work for free" or to shell out hundreds of dollars.
You may as well ask why people volunteer their time at all.
It's fair that both parties feel like they're benefiting, so no direct transaction needs to occur.
Comparing this to volunteering generally isn't the same. I volunteer with local registered charities because I believe in their mission, and the volunteer work I do is directly impacting and improving the lives of the people I'm working with.
Which may be the crux of the GP's question. Why volunteer in the community in a way that results in a for-profit organisation monetising you for their gain, instead of finding a non-profit in your community to be volunteering your time towards? The non-profit / charity in your community's goals are more likely to be aligned with your own, than the for-profit social network.
A moderator’s work primarily benefits, directly, the users, because it allows them to communicate safely. The platform only gets help indirectly.
Charities often have salaried or reimbursed employees; do you volunteer in order to get their salary paid? Of course not, you do it because it helps actual users; the fact that this allows people to get paid, somehow, is an indirect benefit. Same here, really.
If the charity started stalking me to sell my data onto advertisers in order to pay the salaried staff or other stakeholders more money, I'd stop doing any work through them.
The charity's mission is not maximising revenue / profits.
Any VC/PE backed corporation's mission is to maximise revenue / profits at any cost.
Benefitting from socializing is not worth the reddit moderator role is my opinion, under the psychological load they operate in.
The same will, and should, happen to Reddit. One of the largest sites on the Internet is making money hand over first while moderators end up paying the price for no real benefit.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program
a) prevents people who want to be mods, from being mods
b) breaks the way the site works
What gives you the right to do that? Seriously, if you want to live in a nanny state, please, not in my back yard.
I do not want you to be my nanny.
Reddit's moderation problems are not so big that you are justified in putting a gun to other peoples' faces to force them to do it the way you want.
The Fair Labor Standards Act: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp
Reddit's preference of exploiting unpaid labor, and it's failure to plan for the inevitable event where that exploited labor decides they want to be compensated for their work is entirely on Reddit Inc. A company valued at $3 billion should have understood the potential risk.
All Reddit mods who feel burned out or are otherwise struggling because of the work they've done as mods should file a complaint with the Dept. of Labor and request financial compensation for the work performed, and coverage of any medical treatment stemming from the results of moderating toxic communities.